and other contemplations…

Old Haunts

It’s been four years and I’m not quite sure that I remember the way to the cafeteria. But I feel my way. I make it. No problem.

I do remember that the food is bad, and expensive. But this time, I can afford it. I don’t have to get the soup and stack up on the free bread. I’ll get the special.

I eat alone today. Don’t worry, it’s by choice. It most often is. Attributed to something in between my own laziness and my grand appreciation for solitude in the midst of the blur.

It’s finally sunny. So I sit in the sunroom. I hear people’s conversations. There are a few distinctive types – the one happy for some superficial social interaction for their lunch break, the other discussing family details like they’ve lived amongst each other for years, another in what seems to be obligatory work discussion – just to have someone to sit with. With others, I see the plain-faced boredom – they look up to watch me eventually put my tray away. Longer than normal. Curiosity mixed with the interest of something new.

I start walking back to my office – my office for the day, anyway. The elevator is small, but I get in with two other people. Something, or really – someone makes it inevitably awkward. The first gets off at the second floor. “Bonne après-midi,” mumbled, just barely discernible. There’s no room for a response. The next elevator ding is mine and the other person gets off with me, clearly confused at who I am and why I’m on his floor, but no questions asked.

This isn’t the first time I’ve returned to old stomping grounds. And I suspect that it’s going to happen more and more often. I can’t remember if I ever really meant to be back here – I think I hadn’t exactly planned on it in the way that one doesn’t when one doesn’t think about it. It forces me to reflect on the ways I’ve changed and what I’ve done between now and then to cause that change, for better or worse.

I was young – fresh out of college. I’d never worked the 9 to 5. And I was eager, so insufferably excited. So sure that this is where I wanted and needed to be, that this was the only logical decision for me, because this is what you do, and what people want. That all dropped off somewhere in the first or second quarter of graduate school, scattered and windswept over the streets of Baltimore. By February, I’d had enough. I wondered where I’d gotten so mesmerized by all of it. It was time for something real. Two years later, I’m still finding that that’s a hard thing to pin down.

So, what’s the difference between being here then and being here now? Basically that I walk around like I own the place. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But in comparison to what my demeanor was before, that description is pretty accurate. There was confidence before. But that confidence seems to have taken root and blossomed, somehow escaping my watchful inward gaze. Or perhaps, I simply give zero fucks. I take in the looks and stares like they were self-evidently meant for me. And they’re thoroughly amusing.

Now, I’m left wondering where that change began. Was it becoming thoroughly jaded with the work and the world? Did it start with a need for more tangible impact, right now? Or realizing so much of the perpetual, tangible frustration are problems of the system? Or was it simply a byproduct of aging and more practice, if only four years of it? Whatever it was, I’d venture to say that the transformation hasn’t ended there. All I’m left with at this moment is sheer amazement at the magnitude of the change.

In some way, it gives me more confidence of the things that, in my head, I can’t do now simply because of “how I am” or what skills I may or may not have, I’ll be able to do only a short time from now. Perhaps I can now if only given the opportunity. But why leave it to so much circumstance? Maybe, I need to create my own opportunity.